


Set My Heart Aflame, Ev'ry Part Aflame

by MonPetitParselmouth



Series: Endless Cycle of Vengeance [7]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Adrienne de Lafayette & James Madison is an actual tag and I am so happy, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, F/M, Gen, Late late late, Metaphors, Reference to Gravity Falls, Romance, for this universe anyway, mentions of Laf's dark past, unprecedented fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2019-05-03 06:46:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14563326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonPetitParselmouth/pseuds/MonPetitParselmouth
Summary: “I’m. . . I’m sorry,” he said, and she could sense how truly and wholly he meant it. “I didn’t mean. . . I should not have. . .”Before she knew what she was really doing, Adrienne’s hand was on his arm. “Don’t be.”(Or, how Laf and Adrienne met, bonded, and somehow managed to discreetly fall in love, with James' subtle help.)





	Set My Heart Aflame, Ev'ry Part Aflame

The first time Adrienne heard of Lafayette, it was over a text conversation with James on the day that he froze over the city. It was before she even knew his name.

The fist time Adrienne **encountered** Lafayette, it was _still_ before she even knew his name. James had dragged her onto the scene of a Marquis/Blue Phoenix showdown, and the first thing that crossed her mind was _damn that villain’s gorgeous,_ after which she firmly shook herself and pretended she hadn’t thought that.

(She didn’t answer any of James’ texts for five hours after that incident.)

The first time Adrienne **met** Lafayette, it was in Thomas’ living room and he had just clambered through the window, wearing his navy supersuit and dripping blood, bringing with him a freezing-cold breeze and a blush to Adrienne’s cheeks. 

“Hi,” Adrienne said softly, and her voice _did not squeak_. At all. Obviously. Because why would it squeak? Ha.

Ridiculous. 

The Marquis untied his mask, a smile stealing across his face. A few curly strands of hair escaped his tight bun. “Hi.”

“I’m Adrienne.” Her gaze roved over his jawline, his hazel eyes, the amused quirk at the corner of his mouth.

“I’m Lafayette,” said the Marquis. “I like your shirt.”

She looked down at herself, and a matching smile spread on _her_ face; it was her Led Zeppelin T-shirt. “Thanks,” Adrienne said.

“I think you two will be friends,” interjected Thomas with a grin. 

And friends they became. Adrienne found herself somehow worming her way closer into the lives of James and his group of supervillain friends. For some reason, they actually seemed to genuinely like having her around. She would chat with them at Thomas’s place—although only when James and Dolley were there, too, because whenever it was Just Aaron, Thomas, Maria, and Laf, they were most definitely discussing Villainous Plans, and civilians were most definitely Not Allowed. 

 _Friend_. It was a funny word, alien, almost, and it pulsed in Adrienne’s brain whenever she was with her companions. 

She pondered it one day as she, Dolley, and Thomas were hanging out in a café. James fit into this category, for sure, because he was the one that had sucked her in to his little gang, the one who had ensured that she belonged somewhere. So did Thomas, and Maria, and Dolley.

Laf. . . 

So what if her pale cheeks tinged pink whenever she glanced sideways at him? So what if she stuttered whenever he asked her something? It didn’t mean. . . God, it didn’t mean she was. . . that she wanted to be his _girlfriend_ or something equally. . . in t e re s t in g. 

Adrienne almost snorted at the thought. _Imagine that. Me, Lafayette’s girlfriend._

 _(_ She would vehemently deny the way it made her flush just to think about it until her dying day.)

 _I do not have a crush on the_ Marquis _,_ Adrienne told herself fiercely. _I do not._

“You totally do, you know,” said Thomas from where he was lounging in his chair behind her. 

“Stay outta my mind, Cipher!”

He snickered. “Whatever helps you sleep at night,” he said, before he vanished in a flash of magenta light. She almost laughed, too, but she sobered up when she remembered his earlier words. 

_You totally do, you know._

Dolley raised an eyebrow but said nothing, glancing at Thomas’s vacant seat. They were lucky no one else was in the café. 

Adrienne shook her head in denial. Her relationship with Lafayette was purely platonic. They were friends. That was all. Friends, nothing else, and she didn’t _want_ it to be anything else. A sister, that was all she was to Laf (or maybe a weird cousin). That was _all_. Right?

 _Right_?

It wasn’t like _he_ was pining after _her,_ anyway. Adrienne really needed to get a grip. 

 

»»-------------¤-------------«« 

 

In the back room of the bakery where Lafayette worked, three teenagers were huddled around the countertop where Laf was supposedly pounding dough, and was in reality pacing and tearing at his hair. 

“Do you think she likes me?” Lafayette hissed frantically at James and Thomas—who had just arrived, and, typically, out of thin air—for the umpteenth time, tugging at their sleeves. 

“I don’t _know_ , Laf,” Thomas, who looked like he honestly couldn’t care less, groaned, throwing up his hands in exasperation. 

“She might have possibly told me so,” answered James, lying through his teeth. Adrienne had admitted nothing of the sort, but he could tell, and damn if he didn’t want to see his two friends get together. 

His head whipped around so fast it was almost comical. “She said that? And you never saw fit to tell me this?” 

“I didn’t think you would want to know,” replied James, bemused. 

“Her eyes are really pretty,” said Laf dreamily, resting his chin on his hand. “And she has a nice voice. I could hear her singing earlier. Is she French too? Her accent sounds French. She might like me. Do _you_ think she does?”

“No offense, but don’t think Adrienne is going to have any affection for somebody who literally freezes the city every other week,” Thomas pointed out. 

James made a mental note to _never_ mention this conversation to Adrienne.

 

»»-------------¤-------------«« 

 

Martha Manning @neon-pink-cuttlefish

So the supers of #PurpleReign must be college students, because there’s maybe an attack a fortnight during the school year, but there’s an attack every other day in the summer, am I right?

 

JJ @Publius5

@neon-pink-cuttlefish Also, they act very immature sometimes.

 

»»-------------¤-------------«« 

 

_Chat: how is this even our lives (aka trying to keep the city from being blown up)_

 

bluephoenix: have you read this

 

lady liberty: ha someone’s on to us she isn't far off

 

Icarus: @Publius5 doesn’t know what he’s talking about

 

Archangel: I’d agree if not for you

 

Icarus: Excuse me

 

Archangel: You’re excused

 

Bluephoenix: Please, you two

 

lady liberty: what kind of username is ‘neon pink cuttlefish’ anyway

 

lady liberty: girl could have used turtle or dolphin or seal or something actually likable

 

lady liberty: bUT NO

 

lady liberty: CUTTLEFISH

 

Icarus: Look on the bright side, at least it wasn’t blobfish

 

bluephoenix: what

 

»»-------------¤-------------«« 

 

_I despise the world and all in it._

Adrienne had never hated James’ gang of decidedly morally ambiguous friends more than she did in this moment.

According to them, she needed to go out into the sunshine with somebody. And the somebody they had in mind was not a person she was particularly prone to avoiding, but definitely not a person she was capable of placing in 

“What do you mean?” she’d asked. 

“Well,” answered Thomas, “you like Laf a lot, right? As a friend, I mean?”

Completely perplexed, she’d nodded. 

“He’s super nice, right? And awesome and amazing and is great at parkour and is handsome and has cool powers and deserves much more happiness then life has given him so far?”

Adrienne’s cheeks heated a little and she glared at them, knowing precisely what they were up to and not exactly happy about it. She nodded again, oblivious to Maria’s knowing look. “So?”

“So you should totally go out with him!”

It took her a minute to fully process what he said. Then it slammed into her with full force, like a train wreck. “What?” she’d demanded frantically in something akin to horror. “Like. . . like a _date_?” Her head began to spin. 

“Of course not!” Maria had exclaimed hastily, and for some reason, something inside of Adrienne wrenched for one heart-stopping moment. “As friends. For fun, you know. Since you two both are sooooo busy, and probably need to unwind.”

She’d warily agreed, suspicious crowding her mind. No doubt they had an ulterior motive, villains always did. She’d learned, however, that it was best to just go along with their weird schemes, and hope you’d be fortunate enough to have all your limbs by the time it was over. Adrienne assumed it was mostly to do with Lafayette, not her. 

That was why she was sitting awkwardly on a fountain in a park next to Laf, making idle small talk and inwardly fuming. _Thanks a lot, Thomas! He’s five inches away from me and my damned teenage hormones can’t deal!_

That was all it was, right? Hormones? Not actual infatuation?

“So,” said Laf, who’d been dragged here just as forcefully as Adrienne had, and looked as pained as she felt, “how. . . how are you?”

“All right.” She didn’t trust herself to say anything else. 

The silence that fell had them both steadfastly refusing to meet each other’s gazes. Adrienne stubbornly kept her eyes riveted to the cracks in the pavement on the ground, studiously staring at them. Sun design inside of a diamond. Diamond inside of a circle. Circle inside of a rounded square. Rounded square inside of a weird spiky rhombus thing. And it just repeated, all the way across every tile. She could only pretend to be interested in it for so long.

Risking a glance at Lafayette, she saw that he too was trying not to look at her, fixing his stare to the sky. 

He couldn’t look at her. She couldn’t look at him. It would be too hard, too hard because no matter how much she pushed it down, she wanted _something_ with him, something more than the friendship they were in, and he couldn’t, wouldn’t feel the same, or wouldn’t he have said something?

_Why hadn’t she?_

Their refusal to speak or meet eyes had stretched out to the point of stoniness. Whatever Thomas and Maria and Aaron had wanted for her, this wasn’t it. Adrienne could feel her heart pounding in her ears and her chest, raging through her blood. It felt wrong somehow, like an irregular puzzle piece that had been shoved roughly into a spot it didn’t fit in. 

“Adrienne?” 

She delicately studied her interlocked fingers and nodded. “Mmm?”

“May I tell you a. . . secret?” Laf sounded almost nervous. Unsure of what to expect, Adrienne nodded again.

Pause.

“When I was eleven,” Laf began, and here he stopped. 

Adrienne could feel the tension spiking. The playfully awkward mood had been quickly diminished into something far more stiff, and she was beginning to feel a knot of dread twist into existence in her stomach. She chanced a risky, nervous peek at him. His eyes were determinedly shut tight, his lips thinned to the point where they had turned white. Legitimately concerned by now, Adrienne brushed a lock of hair out of her face and frowned. 

“Lafayette?” she ventured when he was silent still. “Are you all right?”

A shuddering breath. “ _Oui_ ,” he replied hurriedly. “When I was eleven. . . my. . . my brother and my mother. . . there was a river.” His face appeared drawn, haunted, and a jagged bolt of realization that jolted her bones struck Adrienne. 

_Oh._

Now she understood. 

“Michel—my brother,” he continued, “he slipped and fell in.”

 _No._ No, Adrienne didn’t want him to keep going, she wanted the muffled drone of his voice, its matter-of-fact mask concealing the pulse of clear pain he was feeling, to drown out her senses. She wanted it to stop, she didn’t want to hear this. 

But he was telling her for a reason. 

Adrienne steeled herself, clenched her jaw, and banked her rising fear. 

“He could not swim,” whispered Lafayette, and a part of her shattered at his words. Even if she wanted to speak, she was sure she couldn’t have managed. “My mother. . . my mother leaped in after, but the tide. . . the tide. . . I didn’t do anything.”

 _I’m so sorry,_ Adrienne would have said if she could move her lips. _I want to help you and I don’t know how,_ she would have said if she was brave enough. _I think I’m in love with you,_ she would most certainly NOT have said under any circumstances. 

Laf’s expression opened up suddenly, like four walls collapsing in on themselves. Anguish glinted in his irises. “It was my—”

“No,” Adrienne interrupted without thinking, “no, it was _not_ , you can’t blame yourself for—”

“ _IT WAS MY FAULT_!” screeched Lafayette. He looked quite mad; his fists were balled at his sides, and his furious, heartbroken gaze seemed to sever the sky into fragments, fragments that were now falling silently around them and slicing Adrienne apart. She stared at him, shocked into silence at the outburst. A muscle twitched on his jawline, and for a split second, he suddenly looked more vulnerable than she had ever seen him. 

He looked so crushed. 

Lafayette was only a _teen_. What unpredictable whims of the cosmos had made him feel so rawly like this? 

He turned his head. She heard his voice, low and apologetic. “I’m. . . I’m sorry,” he said, and she could sense how truly and wholly he meant it. “I didn’t mean. . . I should not have. . .”

Before she knew what she was really doing, Adrienne’s hand was on his arm. “Don’t be.”

About ten seconds passed before her breath suddenly hitched in her throat. 

_She was touching him she was touching him shewastouchinghimhimhimhim, sweet Jesus, what was she thinking?_

Yanking her fingers away was out of the question, that was just rude. Keeping them there, though, didn’t seem much more polite, surely that would come across as creepy. Adrienne’s flesh grew hotter and hotter, to the point of burning, 

Her internal crisis was plowed through by the sound of his voice again. His broken, accented, damnably beautiful voice that she just couldn’t help but melt at, and it was a clear weakness, but she couldn’t do a thing. It wasn’t what she wanted, _he_ wasn’t what she wanted,.

“May I tell you another secret?”

But it meant the world to her, Adrienne reflected somewhat detachedly, that he always asked. 

“You may,” she teased halfheartedly, and the mood seemed to lighten a shade. 

Lafayette simply gazed at her. His piercing hazel eyes made her feel as though he was peeling her mind inside out and mangling it into wayward thoughts. Somehow, someway, it wasn’t unpleasant, though.

It was scary, yes, but it was oddly satisfying.

So when he opened his mouth again, she was caught off guard, lost in her own glittering world. But his words lifted right off his lips like iridescent dragonflies fluttering across a stream from one delicate leaf to another, and they carved thrilling runes in her skin and across her entire body.

“I’m going to kiss you right now.”

And he leaned forward and did.

A fiery explosion, akin to one of the Arsonist’s, went off at an alarming rate in Adrienne’s stomach as Laf’s elegant fingers twined in her hair, the feeling of his mouth on hers sending electric jolts through her entire body. She gripped at his arm to support herself as thousands of energy-charged fireflies flittered agitatedly around her midriff. Her mind seemed to have shut off, the only sign of its existence being the vague pulse of _yes, yes, yes,_ repeating itself over and over in her head.  

Adrienne suddenly felt herself slipping sideways on the smooth marble, and she broke away from Lafayette, fingers scrabbling at the side of the stone bench. She tumbled over, a small shriek escaping her mouth, and the next thing she knew, both she and Laf had plunged into the frigid water behind them. The glossy tiles underneath Adrienne scraped at her legs, and she gripped at the side of the fountain, cold from the liquid seeping through her thin sundress, hair swirling, eyes stinging from contact with the chlorinated water.

She surfaced with a gasp, feeling Lafayette’s hand press into hers and yanking her up. Awkwardly, she clambered over the side and stood shakily on the ground, water dripping down her body and puddling around her feet. Lafayette coughed next to her, equally drenched. 

She glanced at Laf. Laf glanced at her. Simultaneously, they burst into laughter, the waterlogged sound sharp and low in Adrienne’s throat. 

“What just happened?” she managed to choke out. 

“I have no idea,” answered Laf, coughing up water. 

The little tones of his voice, wavering up and down and maybe just the slightest bit nervous, repeated themselves in Adrienne’s head, blooming in full color and thoroughly outshining all her other thoughts.   

“Yeah,” she mumbled dazedly, not even sure what there was to agree to. She probably sounded ridiculous, agreeing to nothing. 

He didn’t seem to mind. 

 

»»-------------¤-------------«« 

 

_You texted jemmy james on Wednesday at 5:03 pm_

 

adrienne: we should start an ‘i’m dating a supervillain’ club

 

jemmy james: ?

 

jemmy james: oH!!!

 

jemmy james: You and Lafayette got together???

 

adrienne: oui 

 

adrienne: [ _Picture attached_ ]

 

jemmy james: FINALLY

 

jemmy james: THOMAS OWES ME TWENTY BUCKS

 

»»-------------¤-------------«« 

 

He was soaked. But then, so was she.

He’d panicked for a moment in the fountain, his mind flashing back to _the river and his mother and Michel and there was nothing he could do, nothing, and he was going to lose Adrienne too and—_

And then he’d met her eyes, which were startled, almost amused, and he’d been snapped out of it. Adrienne was his anchor on a stormy sea, and when he was tempest-tossed, she was there to pull him to shore. A mere moon, Laf mused, was forever a wayward celestial body in the endless void of the galaxy if it didn’t have a planet to orbit. 

Lafayette’s gaze shifted sideways to Adrienne, sitting beside him on the bench they had found that was far from any fountain. Then his eyes veered sharply down to where both their hands lay limply between them, in a fold of the skirt of Adrienne’s lilac dress—intertwined. 

 _Her_ gaze was trained on the sunset, unfocused and dreamy, like she was far away in her own world. Her sheet of medium champagne hair was plastered to her neck and spilling down her back, rather tangled. A blithe, secretive smile graced her slightly parted lips. 

Laf gave her fingers a small squeeze, a smile forming at his own lips as Adrienne started and whipped her head around to face him. His heart felt like a melted piece of chocolate when she lightly squeezed back. 

The reality of the situation slammed into him abruptly. 

He, Gilbert du Motier de Lafayette, had _fallen in love_ with Adrienne de Noailles. In freaking _love_. 

Well, one thing was for certain: he wasn’t planning on falling out of it anytime soon. 

 

»»-------------¤-------------«« 

 

She and Laf were together. _Together_ together. Adrienne felt like shrieking aloud every time the thought crossed her mind, which was a worrisome lot. 

(She got a pretty strange look from her friend Lisa that one time when she actually _did_ shriek aloud. Oops.)

Hours, days, a week flew by. She and Lafayette were practically glued together for the entire time. 

They were _together_. She could hardly wrap her head around it. 

Granted, it was difficult for Adrienne to connect the Marquis, an actual supervillain, with the bubbly, quirky teen that kissed her awake after her frequent catnaps, tucked daisies into her hair whenever they took a walk in the park, and constantly compared her freckles to a scattering of stars and her bright eyes to solar flares in his adorable poems, but she rolled with it. After all, her mind was rather preoccupied with how sunlight gleamed on the corners of Laf’s mouth when he smiled, or how his eyes lit up and sparkled like a million hazel gems when he had an idea, and why was she wasting time trying to describe Lafayette with words, anyway? Since when was that even possible? 

Laf had trusted her with his past. With the story of his mother and his brother. With how his cousin had borderline neglected him since he had moved to New York, always working. Adrienne had talked to her parents, and they were more than willing to let Lafayette stay with them a few nights a week, when his cousin was out doing who-knew-what. Adrienne was nothing short of ecstatic. 

(Neither told them about the whole ‘supervillain’ thing. Some things were best kept secret.)

Adrienne was often taken aback by the biting sting in Laf’s words when he was the Marquis, usually directed towards Icarus, but she knew from experience that between all the bleeding and fighting, he was just as human as she was, even if _she_ didn’t freeze over entire streets in her free time for the sake of it. 

They weren't a normal couple, by the standards of the average citizen.

Most of the time, though, Adrienne found that she didn’t give a damn.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I know, I know, I said two weeks 'til the next installment, and I'm a week late. But Monday through Friday, I was in Idyllwild with no WiFi/Internet access, and last weekend I didn't post this one. So as an apology, this will be a double update; the next one will be up in the next ten minutes or so. 
> 
> Anyway. . . hope you liked it!


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